After the typically terrifying flight (I need more diazepam I think!) to Auckland I arrived at a typically drab urban hostel, which was a bit of a shock to the system after La Casa Roja. I arranged to hook up with the three girls for a drink later that day and I trawled around Auckland’s electronic shops in search of somewhere to turn my laptop in. I dropped it off and headed back to the centre of town to meet the girls, but we were all insanely jet-lagged and only managed a couple of beers each before crashing at about 8pm.
Somewhere over the south Pacific we managed to lose the 15th December. It never actually happened for me - I left Chile on the evening of the 14th December, flew for 13 hours and landed in Auckland on the morning of 16th December. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable date line-related explanation, but it makes my head hurt. Joyously I managed also to lose my camera in the hostel in Chile. Hence the lack of pics in the last post. Bugger.
I didn’t actually have any plans for Christmas and there were now only about 10 days to go, but Suzy, Carly and Frances kindly asked me to join them in Queenstown. They’d booked themselves into a hostel for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day so I was more than happy to tag along for the ride, but it was going to be a real mission to get down there in time.
Somewhere over the south Pacific we managed to lose the 15th December. It never actually happened for me - I left Chile on the evening of the 14th December, flew for 13 hours and landed in Auckland on the morning of 16th December. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable date line-related explanation, but it makes my head hurt. Joyously I managed also to lose my camera in the hostel in Chile. Hence the lack of pics in the last post. Bugger.
I didn’t actually have any plans for Christmas and there were now only about 10 days to go, but Suzy, Carly and Frances kindly asked me to join them in Queenstown. They’d booked themselves into a hostel for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day so I was more than happy to tag along for the ride, but it was going to be a real mission to get down there in time.
The next morning, when we felt a bit more compus mentus, we all got together and decided that we’d hire a couple of camper vans to get us down to Queenstown in time for Christmas. There was a bit of toing and froing about which company we would use and we eventually settled on a company called Spaceships - essentially converted people carriers, painted bright orange and named after sci-fi characters, mine was called Dune so I was happy. (And strangely obsessed with her five days further down the line!)
We were due to head off on 20th December, so I had a couple of days to kill in Auckland. Not the most attractive or interesting of towns, but certainly not unpleasant. And an old friend and colleague from Emap called Luana who had just returned home to Auckland and she took me on a wild night out around some of the city’s brighter night spots.
She introduced me to her big, gay Samoan friend Trevor and we managed to fit in some Karoake, a couple of night clubs, helping the bin men at first light and also a swim in Mission Bay in our pants as the sun came up. Bedlam as Luana put it, but so much fun.
She introduced me to her big, gay Samoan friend Trevor and we managed to fit in some Karoake, a couple of night clubs, helping the bin men at first light and also a swim in Mission Bay in our pants as the sun came up. Bedlam as Luana put it, but so much fun.
When I’d recovered we hit the road in our Spaceship with the prospect of 1,600km to cover in four days. It was always going to be a stretch, but we set off in good spirits - with a fellow waif and stray called Mark in tow.
I managed to drive a grand total of one hour before I was pulled over for speeding. Apparently doing 120km/h in a 100km/h zone is not cricket in this part of the world. Oops. 
Still, he was a very nice man. Not nice enough to let me off my ticket, but it‘s the first speeding ticket I‘ve ever had so I wasn‘t too despondet. And where better to get one than in a country where the fine is only NZ$100, there won‘t be any points on my licence and I can skip the country if they come after me. It’s all good.
After three or four hours solid driving we were struggling to see the appeal of New Zealand as to me it looked pretty much like England.
We did notice some steam rising up from over some hills so headed towards them in the hope of seeing some of the fabled hot springs. We found hot springs, but not quite in the natural form we’d been hoping for!
Still we hit the supermarket, stocked up on beans and booze and settled down for our first night in a layby beside Highway 1. Not particularly salubrious, but the girls serenaded me with renditions of various pop songs from the 1980s. For two hours. Thanks girls!
The following morning we decided to head for the source of the roaring sound we’d been able to hear from our layby and quickly found New Zealand‘s largest waterfall, the Haku. Very impressive, and we headed up stream for a quick dip in some real hot springs before hitting the road again for Wellington. It was my first genuine “travelling in New Zealand” experience and was a real thrill.
It wasn’t a hot spring as I’d imagined it in my head. It was more the edge of a river with a hot waterfall flowing into it, which created some very weird sensations - the water at the top of the river was very hot indeed and then three inches below it was freezing. It was actually very enjoyable once you got used to it, kind of like being in a sauna while someone runs ice cubes over your back and arms.
We stopped for some lunch by the edge of Lake Taupo and watched some locals taking the “Hole in One Challenge”, essentially a platform moored a hundred yards or so offshore with a golf pin on it. Only in New Zealand.
The push down to Wellington wasn’t so much fun and after we’d dropped Mark off in a hostel in the centre of Wellington it was well and truly dark before we found another suitable layby. We polished off a couple of bottles of wine in about 20 minutes, watched half an hour of a DVD and then passed out on our camp beds.
We had a stupid o’clock start to get back to Wellington to catch the 8 o’clock ferry, but I seem to be getting the hang of these kind of starts so we made it on board with time to spare and promptly fell asleep until we arrived in Picton at the north end of the South Island.
The South Island is undeniably more beautiful than the North, but I will have to go back to the North as we raced through it so quickly and I’d really like to see Raglan, Coramandel and Northland.
The South Island is undeniably more beautiful than the North, but I will have to go back to the North as we raced through it so quickly and I’d really like to see Raglan, Coramandel and Northland.
After stopping for lunch in Blenheim we headed down through New Zealand wine country and, weirdly, given the same thing had happened to me on the last road trip I’d been on in Californian wine country, we began to run out of petrol. After a tense 40 minutes we rolled in neutral into a tiny town and filled up just as the vans were on their last legs. Unlike in the US running out of petrol out here would have been a much longer wait before someone came along. Out here it’s a surprise when you see another car on the road rather than when you come across an empty stretch.
A few hours later we hit the west coast of the island and had a lovely drive along the coast road, at one point crossing a single lane bridge that was shared with some railway tracks, which was a tad nerve-wracking.
Just as the sun was setting we managed to find our first campsite and just collapsed onto the chairs and had some Heinz sausages and beans. Proper camping food (plus I’d been bunged up for the last three days and was getting worried!).
The site was based on the edge of a lake so when we’d broken camp we went for a swim in the freezing black water. The girls are planning on a sky dive, but if their performance on the edge of the lake was anything to go by they won’t make it out of the plane!
By now we’d got into a bit of a routine and the prospect of a five-hour drive wasn’t actually that daunting. The scenery is so incredible that it’s impossible to feel tired. If anything the issue is staying focussed on the road as incredible view after incredible view rolls past the windscreen and your attention wanders, rather than staying awake.
Photographs can never do the experience of driving through this landscape justice, and for large parts of the time you’re lost in your own thoughts, listening to the music and taking in the views. In any other country doing the kinds of mileages we were doing would have been deathly dull, but here it is a genuine pleasure. Fortunately my van partner Frances is wonderful and kept us going with a selection of tunes from the iPod, and when we were bored of that reading exerts from Chicken Soup For The Soul.
We did actually buy ourselves a The Greatest Christmas Album In The World Ever to get us in the Christmas spirit, but after hearing Band Aid for the fourteenth time in three days it began to wear a bit thin and we went back for some more Chicken Soup.
After our dunk in the lake we headed for the Franz Josef glacier.
In comparison to the Perito Merino in Argentina and some of the monsters I saw in southern Tierra del Fuego it was a tiddler, but the girls hadn’t seen one before so they went up in a helicopter to view it from the air. You can tell these girls are from the north east - they walked bare-foot on the top of the glacier. I didn’t go with them, but they did bring me back a snowball, which was sweet.
The next stop was a sandfly-blown outpost called Pleasant Flats about two hours north of Wanaka in the New Zealand Lake District (I always thought our Lake District was world class, but Chile and New Zealand have us beaten hands down).
The drive from Franz Josef to Wanaka was, again, awesome. We realised we were running out of superlatives to describe what we were seeing and tried to make some up, but stupeful and amazome are no more adequate than their legitimate roots. Every corner presented a new vista that took your breath away, like this:
In Wanaka we stopped for some grub and a swim in the glacier-fuelled lake (yes, it was cold, but were English and hard)
before the final push to Queenstown up over the highest road in New Zealand (1,000m).
And, finally, after 1,620km, four days, one speeding ticket and fourteen listening to Fairy Tale Of New York we arrived at the hostel at 5.00pm on Christmas Eve.
Mission accomplished, and a huge adventure had. A proper road trip in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I would recommend it to everyone if you ever get the chance.
